Many organizations rely upon the sharing of information to authenticate the identity of individuals for a variety of reasons. For example, in fighting crime and apprehending criminals, police departments depend on being able to share information from the records systems of other police departments. This is because criminals are transient. Different police departments may be tracking the same criminal and not be aware of their mutual interest in that individual. Furthermore, police departments require swift access to information that will give them probable and reasonable grounds to detain a criminal suspect. Typically, this requires the individual police officer to manually search records or place numerous telephone calls to individuals who may not be available when the information is required. Therefore, data sharing between organizations like police departments can combat crime and save investigative hours. Unfortunately, it is only the minority of police departments in any jurisdiction that are sufficiently large and well funded and can afford a searchable records management system. Most police departments cannot afford such extravagant systems. This makes it difficult for smaller police departments to share critical information between themselves and with the larger police departments.
Modern police records generally contain information about people in the form of names, addresses, vehicle license plate numbers, textual histories and records of prior criminal activities. Increasingly, biometrics is becoming a useful tool in fighting crime. These biometrics have traditionally taken the form of images of fingerprints and systems for comparing them against an input. Modern computers with significant processing power can now store and manipulate much larger image files. Police departments can now create databases of mugshots of criminals that can be accessed by individual officers and used to identify suspects. However, one disadvantage associated with a large system of mug shots is that comparisons must be done visually, that is, using the human eye. This can be a time consuming, cumbersome and inaccurate process.
Other organizations also need a capability to verify the identity of their clients. For example passport control agencies and licensing bodies are vulnerable to fraudulent use of identification documents.
Advancements in computer technology have created an opportunity to apply machine vision and computerized face recognition technologies to applications where it is important to confirm the identity of individuals. Furthermore, the Internet provides an opportunity for small organizations to access, search and share centralized databases created and held by larger organizations. This opportunity has not been fully exploited because of the expense involved in acquiring a system that would permit such activities.
The creation of a registry of biometric information and the ability to share such information in a swift and inexpensive manner over the Internet offers a number of advantages such as perpetual operation and access from remote locations. Therefore there is a requirement for an Internet-based, low cost and low maintenance tool that will create and permit remote access to centralized registries of biometric records for the purpose of biometric data exchange over a local or wide area network. To the best of our knowledge, no such system or method has been created.